What are your project values?

In his book, Second Order Project Management, Michael Cavanagh sets out a set of values for project teams to live by. He invites readers to borrow, modify, add to or delete from this list, so here they are.

Our values are the rules by which we live – the filters through which we evaluate possible actions, the base upon which we make decisions in support of the achievement of our collective and individual vision and purpose.

We take good risks. Complacency kills slowly, risk adversity kills quickly. The result, however, is the same.

We are a team, not a bunch of individuals or a group of organisations. The team is our second family. We share problems, and more significantly, we share successes.

We practice empowerment at all levels. We accept that poor decisions are a consequence of a failure to communicate our vision, purpose and values.

We have permission to make mistakes without blame, provided we admit to them and learn from them.

We take responsibility for our actions and those of our team.

We accept that internal harmony doesn’t mean agreeing with everything. But once a decision is made, we support it totally.

We communicate inside, outside and across, keeping it short, sharp and to the point.

We never promise what we know we can’t deliver. But we are confident in what we can achieve when we are stretched.

We do the right thing at all times no matter what.

We never tell lies…especially to ourselves.

And as a result we believe in ourselves and each other.

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Values are what hold a project team together. They need to be workable, practical and achievable. They need to speak to everyone, at all levels in the project. I like these values. I think they would apply to any project, and they are certainly something that I could subscribe to.

What do you think of these? Are there any values you use with your project team that you would add to the list?

Comments

Let me re-phrase this one, just a bit: “If we avoid all risks, we will eventually starve; if we assume all risks, we will quickly be eaten. We keep our place in the food chain by mitigating and transferring risk whenever practical, avoiding risk when possible, and assuming risk when necessary.”